Newtown's Blue Colony Diner provides comfort and rest from tragedy

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Nora Edery moves quickly from table to table, offering to warm the coffee and hearts of anyone who walks through the doors of the Blue Colony Diner.

Outside the wind whips and traffic creeps, day after day, shuttling funeral processions and grief through the heart of Newtown.

“I just try to put on the biggest smile possible,” said Edery, a waitress at the diner for 25 years. “I don't mind it getting really busy; I just want to do my part.”

Situated at the crossroads of Interstate 84 and Church Hill Road, the art deco style diner has served as a community hub for 39 years. Now, in the face of tragedy, the owners and staff have stretched their arms wider to embrace and lift up all of the “helpers” — both local and global — who need nourishment and rest.

Eddie and George Marnelaks, the father-and-son owners, have sent pounds and pounds of free food each morning to Sandy Hook's fire hall for the volunteers and have served hundreds of emergency personnel all week.

“I'm very proud of my bosses, both of them,” Edery said. “For anyone who comes in here with a uniform on — police, firefighters, first responders — he doesn't accept any of their money.”

Area residents and people from across the country have showered the community with help, offering whatever skills they have to console.

Edery's skill is a hefty serving of compassion topped with sweetness.

Advertisement

When a group of mourners came in Thursday after a funeral, Edery noticed they were not eating or talking with each other. She just kept checking in and telling them to “eat up.”

“At the end … they were all talking and laughing and enjoying themselves,” Edery said. “And that's what you like to hear, ya know — the laughter.”

The diner overlooks the interstate traffic, whizzing by the north side, and funeral processions, inching across the overpass to its west.

“When I'm coming into work and the traffic backs up from the funerals, I just turn the radio off and pray,” Edery said.

This week, however, it has been in the middle of a different type of intersection — one of people.

In a single instance, an evangelist from South Carolina sat in a booth next to two television journalists, whose booth was next to a table surrounded by police officers from New York state.

Each was drawn to the town for the same reason, but with a different purpose — saving souls, telling stories or escorting tiny caskets from the church to the grave.

“I greet everyone as my friends, whether I know them or not,” Edery said. “I'm terrible with names, I call everyone ‘Honey.'” The fine line between private and public that has been crossed, in both good and bad ways, this week is less of an issue inside the Blue Colony.

Edery and Tania Casanova, another waitress, have been best friends for more than 20 years.

“Nora is a very special person in this world,” said Casanova. “Everybody calls her grandma Nora. I've never worked with people so good. All of them.”

Edery had to convince Casanova that is was more important to come into work and serve the customers than to mourn alone at home.

“To be honest, I didn't want to come to work,” Casanova said. “For us, last Friday was a nightmare. Many of the kids were my steady customers.”

Ugo and Joan Damia from Danbury were in Newtown on Wednesday for the funeral of 6-year-old Caroline Previdi. They reflected on the perfect town that it was and how this has shattered the sense of safety.

“You think about all those school bombings in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it doesn't seem real,” Joan Damia said. “But now that it happened so close, it really becomes real.”

The Damias say they always stop at the Blue Colony for its comfort, familiarity and convenience. “She usually comes here for the challah bread,” said Ugo Damia about his wife. We often stop here — it's so easy right off the highway.”

But no matter how often Edery forces a smile, she is feeling the pain of the massacre as deeply as the rest.

“Tomorrow's my day off, and I'm saving my tears until then,” she said, “and the bottle of wine.”

--

Kristen Leigh Painter is a staff reporter for the Denver Post on loan to the New Haven Register and reporting on the Newtown shooting this week from Connecticut.

Lockheed says object part of 'sensor technology' testing that ended ThursdayWhat the heck is that thing? It's fair to assume that question was on the minds of many people who traveled along Colo. 128 south of Boulder this week if they happened to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a large, silver projectile perched alongside the highway and pointed north toward town.

PARIS (AP) — Bye, New York! Ciao, Milan! Bonjour, Paris! The world's largest traveling circus of fashion editors, models, buyers and journalists has descended on the French capital, clutching their metro maps and city guides, to cap the ready-to-wear fashion season. Full Story